


hope for the future

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future may be full of fear and desolation, but in his brief moments connecting to his older self, Charles can see that love survives as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hope for the future

**Author's Note:**

> Scratch one off the list of the first seven stories I want to write, post-DoFP. Thanks, as ever, to **pearl_o**!

It's hard to push through Logan's mind. It would have even been hard for him ten years ago, he thinks, when his powers were at their peak and his confidence was at its most bloated. There's a barrier of some kind, a thick blockade of white-blue light that gives when he pushes at it, but won't let him through. He's distracted, still, by the memories swirling around him--wars and fights and fucks and loves--and he tries again to block them out, to narrow the scope of his search, and pushes against the wall of light. It's blinding, but only for a second, and in the next moment he's staring at a dark stone ceiling and lying down on some sort of stone dais. 

His head--Logan's head--pounds and aches and burns, but it's easy to push the shared pain away, secondary to the shock and fear that starts to prickle all over his body as he looks around and realizes what's happening, where he is. 

It's not that he hasn't believed Logan. He's seen stranger things than time travel, and Logan certainly _believes_ he's from the future. It was abstract to him, though--distant. Not his problem, not yet. Here, though, he can feel it. It's heavy and dark and sickening, the fear pouring off of these people. This is their future. If they fail, this is what they are--five frightened people hiding in a cave and trying to stave off death just a few precious moments longer.

He realizes, after a moment, that he can move. He sits slowly and looks around the room. Logan's mind fills in details that Charles couldn't know--the girl at his head is Kitty Pryde, all grown up from when Logan met her at thirteen, but still too young for this war, a brilliant life wasted. Bobby Drake, tending to her wounds, a boy still wounded by his family's rejection of his mutation. 

He turns, and for a moment, Logan's thoughts and his own eyes are discordantly at odds. The man in the wheelchair--old, bald, and so, so tired--cannot be Charles. He must be a stranger. But no--he's there in Logan's thoughts, wise and collected and benevolent, like something out of a fairytale, like something Charles knows he will never be. His gut churns with disappointment--Charles can't be this man, the man Logan so reveres. He can barely keep his own demons at bay and the thought of opening himself up to the rest of the world again fills him with fear. The fear fills him with shame. He can't be this great leader of men. He can't even be a great man any longer.

He looks away quickly, tearing his gaze to the other man. Charles may not have been able to recognize himself, but he recognizes Erik immediately. Even fifty years in the future, sixty years after he first held Erik's body against his in the warm water of the Atlantic and saw his face, shocked and frightened, when they surfaced, Charles recognizes Erik. He's older too, of course, and just as tired as Charles' counterpart, just as frightened, but he's still dignified and poised and beautiful. 

More than that, though--Charles could recognize Erik's mind blindfolded. He can't quite read the full thoughts of anyone in the room. It's hard to keep a grip on Logan's mind, to keep from slipping back to 1973, and it's nearly impossible to press into anyone else's. Still, he can pick up their feelings and their impressions and even through the haze, Erik's mind shines like the beacon it's always been to him--a steady hum of determination and fear and below that, stronger, desperate, his love for Charles. It's brighter than he's ever seen it, focused sharply on the man in front of him and strong enough to cut through the cloud of Logan's consciousness.

He blinks past the wetness in his eyes, swallows against the lump in his throat, wishes he was certain he'd ever feel that from his own Erik ever again. He feels foolish now, choosing his legs over the voices, and even more foolish that after years of Hank pleading and begging him to ease back, to embrace his telepathy again, it was one silent day with Erik, one day where he had a chance to feel Erik's mind against his and missed it that suddenly has him questioning his methods.

He misses Erik. He wants to hate Erik, wants to loathe him, wants to rage at him. He thinks Erik is an idiot and a liar and a cheat. He thinks Erik might very well bring about the downfall of their kind with his short-sighted methods and uncontrollable anger. 

But god, his mind was beautiful. The depth at which he felt things about life, about _Charles_. The purity of his love, as white-hot as everything else he's ever dedicated himself to, as focused. It was a drug better than the serum, and he missed his chance to get it back.

If he even could. There's always, of course, the chance that Erik's boxed those feelings away, despite his overtures on the plane. There's always the chance that Erik saw what Charles has become--strung out, bitter, rotting from the inside out--and decided he was better off keeping distance between them.

He looks at their older selves again, worn and lost and frightened and still together, a united front against the worst the world can throw at them. He wonders if this future would be worth it for a chance to know he and Erik will have this one day, at least. He wonders if maybe he can fix things and still win Erik back. He wonders if Erik will even want to come.

He focuses again on Charles, on himself in fifty years. There's a reason he's here, and it's not to linger on the ghosts of his past, the ache in his soul that Erik left behind. He needs to fix the other ache first, to learn how to withstand the torture of the rest of the world so he can do this one thing, find his lost sister, and then maybe one day he can try again to find his lost love.

"Charles," the man in the wheelchair says, turning towards him.

"Charles," he says back, smiling. 

Their awarenesses coalesce in Charles' mind. While the rest of the minds in the room are distant, little more than pulses of emotion, Erik's clear and bright and the rest dark and muddled as this timeline, the other Charles' mind is wide open to him. He can see everything in it as clear as he can see it in his own, possibly because it is his own, or possibly because his older self knows how to throw open the doors that have been stuck in Charles' own mind for so many years now. He feels it all at once, all around him, and it's nothing more than a split second, the space of a breath, but he sees it all. There's anxiety about Logan's mission, fear for his young companions, anger at himself for not preventing this all those years ago, grief for the lives lost--friends and students and his sister--and, most remarkably, a kernel of hope, warm and glowing bright, patiently stoked by the faith he still has for the world, even in a place like this.

And then, around it all, woven through everything else, quietly stretched in the background, comfortable and easy, is love. Love for his students and friends, but love, most noticeably, for Erik.

All these years, all the things they've both done, all the things they've both seen and lived through and this Charles still loves this Erik with every part of him and without shame or excuses. It fills him up, even in a place like this, in a situation like this, knowing they'll most likely not survive. 

It fills Charles up, too. Maybe these things aren't lost to him. Maybe, one day, he'll have it all back--his powers and Erik alike.

First, though, he needs to talk to the man who can make that possible.

***

It's late May and the trees and flowers and bushes are blooming bright in the late spring sun when Charles gets the call.

"Hello?" he says when he picks up the phone, still staring out at the grounds where Hank and Alex are clearing away brush and debris. A contractor, he assumes, or a parent or former student.

"I have something that belongs to you," says his sister, and he almost drops the phone. Raven came by once, almost a month ago now, to drop off some information about some mutant children. She stayed for dinner and a glass of wine and promised she'd keep in touch. It was hard to let her go, but Logan and Erik had been right--she's not a little girl any longer. She needs to be able to make her own life, her own choices, or else what was the point of saving her all those years ago in the first place.

"Something of mine?" Charles asks.

"In a manner of speaking," Raven says. "I'll drop him off tonight."

Well. The boys will certainly not be pleased by this development.

Erik is injured when Raven drops him--literally flopping him out of a fireman's carry and onto the sofa in Charles' office--at the house that night. His head is inexpertly bandaged and his left leg won't support his weight. He says nothing to Charles, just stares at him as Raven kisses Charles' cheek and then walks back out of the house, before even Hank or Alex finish climbing the stairs.

"I don't want to know what happened, do I?" Charles asks, forcing his expression to remain neutral.

"This wasn't my idea," Erik says, and that's all he says aside from 'yes' and 'no' during Hank's medical exam for the rest of the night.

In the morning, Charles brings him breakfast to the infirmary. 

"I'll be out of your hair in a day, Charles," Erik says.

"I rather doubt that," Charles says. He thinks of his brief vision of their older selves, of Erik standing behind Charles' wheelchair, watching over him. "Hank tells me it will take at least three weeks for your leg to heal properly."

He struggles to find the right balance between anger and resentment, between fear and frustration and love. It's a struggle, too, for Erik--he can see that in his posture and expression, feel it in the waves of indignation rolling off of Erik thick enough to choke, even as he chooses his words with bland care.

"You don't want me here for three weeks," Erik tells him. He holds Charles' gaze and Charles can be nothing but truthful in response.

"No," he says. "I don't want you here for three weeks. I want you here forever."

Erik isn't quick enough to smooth away his confusion, and Charles answers his unvoiced question.

"I hated you," Charles says. "And I hated myself for not hating you enough, for wanting you, for allowing myself to love you. I can barely stand the sight of you some days, but you're a part of me and the things I've seen--I don't agree with what you're doing and the things you've done, but it doesn't stop me from loving the best parts of you and wanting to help you find your way back to me. Just because you've lost your way doesn't mean you're lost forever."

Erik finally looks away, back down at the tray of toast and fruit and coffee.

"Says the man who punched me after seeing me for the first time in ten years. So quick to believe I was guilty of the crimes of which I was accused."

"I was wrong," Charles allows. "And I was bitter and angry. And I still am. I've merely gained some perspective that allows me to admit that I do still care, that there's nothing wrong with that. And I know you care for me, still, too."

Erik's eyes flick up to him, assessingly, and then back down to his plate. He picks up an orange slice between two fingers. "Sticking your nose where you don't belong as usual, I see."

"No," Charles says. "But I saw our future. Or rather, I saw the future we just changed. I saw us and I saw you, standing at the end of the world, old and frightened and determined and still in love with me. And I have faith one day that will be enough for both of us."

"And for now?" Erik asks.

"For now," Charles says. "There will always be a place waiting for you here, until you're ready to stay for good." He swallows against the well of emotion in this throat, against all the other things he still wants to say, equal parts frustration and elation. He has time. They have plenty of time to sort themselves out. "Eat your breakfast, Erik," he says, and turns away, leaving the infirmary to find Hank and Alex and get an update on their renovation progress.

Things aren't right, not yet. He has no illusions that Erik is going to stay this time. But inside himself he can feel a warmth, a light, that kernel of hope that his older self kept alive against all odds.

No, Erik won't stay this time, but one day he will, and for now, that's enough.


End file.
